Pre Writing Skills: A Prerequisite for the Holistic Development of Your Child
Introduction
With the never-before technical refinement in our leisure, work, and education, parents usually get perplexed about the efficacy of conventional techniques that assured a child's growth. There are so many alternatives to tracing and writing present-day that the writing drawing skills brushed up by hands-on practice are nothing but flouted to a greater extent. However, intense research done in the past indicates how basic tracing and writing practiced by novices can do wonders in honing not just the formal writing drawing, but reading skills as well. Before we delve deeper into the undeniable prominence of
pre-writing skills, let us find the essence of tracing and some other paramount aspects.
What are Pre-Writing Skills?
The pre-writing skills or gross motor skills are all about postural control required for handwriting. The organized work of large muscle groups in the trunk, shoulder, and neck leads a child to grasp the traced work and aids in consistent stability. Experts guided analyses have indicated that children who lack indulgence in tracing activities in the initial phase of their life exhibit poor legibility compared to their counterparts. The fine-motor skills developed while letters tracing further help to devise grip strength, eye-hand coordination, finger strength and wrist movement.
Age Speak Volumes About Their Skills
There is a particular age at which children can adapt to different skills. Everything depends on their ability to drive things accordingly, and hence expecting them to grasp at once is logically unjustifiable. Let us look over some of the basic tracing activities designed as per their age and the dexterities they grab:
- Scribbles and Vertical Line- At the age between 1 and 2, the child learns to scribble randomly or spontaneously in horizontal, circular, and vertical motions.
- Horizontal Line and Circle Shape- From 2.5 years, the child starts imitating relentlessly.
- Vertical Line and Horizontal Line- After the stage of imitation, the phase of copying starts. At the age of 3 and above, grasping the cross shape begins.
Checklist before Mastering Tracing Activities
Before you introduce your child to tracing lines or alphabets, there is a list to ensure the clarity needed. Things need to be done at ground level to secure success. A child must have the following skills to expertise in writing drawing:
- Gross Motor Skills- One cannot envision a child walking or running straightforwardly without crawling. Precisely, foreseeing the development of fine motor skills without gross motor skills is irrefutable. Without a strong shoulder, neck and core, it is unthinkable to sit and hence the question of conquering pre-writing skills doesn't come to the surface. The muscle power of the fingers exerts force leading to the controlled position of the pencil.
- Mid-Line Crossing Skills- The proficiency to cross the imaginary midline from the head to the pelvis is known as midline crossing skills. Children develop these skills from infancy, and there are a few indications that your child may lack such skills. Your child, to exemplify, if stops in the middle of writing drawing and require to regain the energy, the sign is unignorable.
- Bilateral Integration- Tracing activities require the control of the pencil and the grip of the paper you are holding. The more a child can have control over both arms and legs, the more is the probability of robust bilateral control. Children who struggle with such control face issues in crawling, tying laces, riding a bike and writing drawing.
Indubitable Benefits of Tracing Writing
Letter formation, Line orientation, and spacing rely predominantly on fine motor skills. With such skills, children can overpower the following effortlessly:
- Hand Grasping- Fine motor development embraces the grasping of pencils, drawing brushes and paper. The effective control of hands results in coherent handwriting abilities hereafter.
- Hand-Eye coordination- Tracing lines invites much required hand-eye coordination in almost every task we perform in life. The ability to comprehend information obtained by the eyes to guide the hands for movement in the required position is known as hand-eye coordination.
- Hand Manipulation skills- The potency required to hold everyday items such as pencil, pen, toothbrush and moving things such as scissors are subjugated by children during tracing activities. It also includes the movement of a pencil while letters tracing on a sheet of paper, necessary for performing other regular tasks.
- Visual Discernment- The capacity to interpret logically what the eyes have seen and the application of visual features in daily life is known as visual perception. The indulgence in pre-writing skills helps measure the distance of the things and enables to grab them accordingly.
- Writing Drawing Skills- The aim of tracing is ultimately good handwriting. Letters tracing at the dawn of life help brush up the drawing and writing skills in future. Tracing a straight line, for instance, might help a child to draw a house independently in the forthcoming time. And for tracing well, there’s nothing better than a pre-writing board, where your child can write with chalk and rub endlessly as and when required. You can try tracing boards from Berry Bee, which are not just reasonably priced but are of the finest quality. Check out the link and your purchase is just a click away:
https://www.berrybee.in/collections/tracing-boards
3 Well Researched Activities to Intensify Motor Skills
- Stick and Paste- You must have observed the assignments of your toddler with the highlighted outer appearance of numerics, alphabets and the stick-paste activity performed by your child. Such pre-writing activities are undoubtedly helpful to create a productive mindset. Also, the child fetches discernment about clarity in tasks.
- Tweezers and Scissors activity- Both activities help children gain strength in fingers. Allow them to pick objects through tweezers and cut paper with child safety scissors. Besides the creation of fun crafts, the grip becomes stronger.
- Puzzles- Solving puzzles is not just advantageous for developing fine-motor skills but also for brain evolution. Picking the puzzle pieces, observing them striving hard, and then seeing solving is relaxing.
In the Nutshell
Tracing is no novice activity carried on with children for years. Nevertheless, the results are exhilarating as ever. Regardless of the number of gadgets, you bestow your child with, finding a viable alternative to the letters tracing on a piece of paper is inconceivable.
Do practice it with the fun-loving worksheets and help your child grow abundantly.